Category Archives: Updates

Ikea and Sonos will present the first products of the Symfonisk range in the Feel Home exhibition in April in Milan .

What better occasion for the two companies, in fact, than the one represented by the Milan Design Week ?

For a look at the new Symfonisk range , Ikea then makes an appointment at Via Tortona 32 in Milan from 9 to 14 April . The Feel Home exhibition will be based on the right atmosphere to create at home by combining two elements: light and sound .

As far as light is concerned, Ikea has been offering the connected and smart lighting system called Trådfri for a long time . As for smart audio systems, the company had announced some time ago the intention to collaborate with Sonos .

The latter is a pioneer brand in audio streaming and in recent times also active in the smart systems market. The collaboration takes shape therefore in the line of audio products for the Ikea Symfonisk home .

Ikea and Sonos create the right atmosphere with sound
Sound and light, according to the Swedish multinational vision, are very powerful stimuli for mood. For the atmosphere of the house they are as important as any sofa, art object or other component of furniture and everyday lifestyle.

Lifestyle that is now becoming increasingly digital, connected, intelligent and interactive. In fact, the company informs, the presentation, or rather the experience of the new line, will take place through interactive installations based on everyday life activities.

In the new line, Ikea’s home furnishing knowledge is combined with Sonos’ experience in creating sound experiences.

The two companies had already previewed a prototype. And that is a speaker connected from a bookcase that will allow a multifunctional use, at an affordable price.

During the week from 9 to 14 April, in the Feel Home exhibition, it will be possible for the first time to listen to Symfonisk . Those interested will also have the opportunity to meet the people behind these products. Then Ikea’s furniture experts and Sonos sound experts.

Sound will therefore also become part of Ikea’s smart home , populated by related products. Including, as we said, the Trådfri range of smart lights , launched in 2016.

By the spring the company will also be launching a range of connected roller shutters . And of course now the speakers too.

So connected products and devices that do not represent simple technological gadgets. But they serve to make everyday life safer and more comfortable and create a better atmosphere at home.

Qualcomm, new chips for smart speakers with AI
Qualcomm presented new SoCs specifically dedicated to smart speakers to accelerate the evolution of these products and make them more intelligent.

The smart speaker market is very dynamic and Qualcomm wants to make these products even more smart and efficient, finding more space in homes. The company has therefore announced the launch of new SoCs that are highly integrated and enabled by IA and a platform dedicated to smart speakers to guide the evolution of smart audio. The presentation took place during the appointment of the Voice & Music tech day in San Diego.

More specifically, Qualcomm announced the launch of the QCS400 SoC . The QCS400 SoCs are designed for even smarter speakers, home assistant soundbar and AV receivers that integrate compute, Wi-Fi mesh, BLE mesh, voice user interface, audio technology and support for Dolby Atmos, DTS and security features. In these SoCs Qualcomm Technologies brings its unique low power consumption and high performance computing features together with its unparalleled expertise in audio technology to help deliver highly optimized and AI-enabled solutions that are designed for audio and audio applications. IoT even smarter.

These new SoCs bring the integration of functions and energy performance for intelligent audio to a higher level than our previous technology, allowing manufacturers to more easily overcome significant technical challenges and develop smarter speakers and assistants with an interface more intuitive voice user, connected user experiences and exceptional sound quality. The new generation of smart audio products must be robust, highly interoperable, feature rich and intelligent, yet extremely energy efficient. Qualcomm Technologies helps meet these needs with our new SoCs, which are unique and fully integrated to combine improved computational processing, IA acceleration and low latency audio distribution in a single chipset. These integrated solutions are designed to reduce the development time of new generation smart speakers, home assistants and sound bars.

At the same time, still for the smart speaker market, Qualcomm has made the CSRA6640 official , a highly integrated and flexible single-chip amplification solution with Qualcomm DDFA digital amplification technology . Thanks to its single-chip architecture, the CSRA6640 offers a new level of integration designed to enable the commercial availability of higher-level Class D amplification on smaller form factors and lower-level products, helping manufacturers to develop portable and efficient speakers that they offer truly differentiated audio quality.

2018 was a particularly busy year for Google’s hardware division, and every indication that this year will prove equally successful.

The Japanese site Nikkei has revealed the roadmap 2019 of the Mountain View giant and have received several confirmations compared to rumors appeared on the Net in recent weeks. First of all, Big G will launch two new smartphone models.

One will be Pixel 4, on which quite conflicting voices have been leaked , while the second will be the Lite version of Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. The latter, according to Japanese, will have a low price not as low as previously thought.

The cost of having it will still be lower than that required for the purchase of iPhone XR. Regarding the presentation date, this could be scheduled in the spring.

Nikkei also talks about an update of the Google Home speaker, although it is not clear if there will be changes only in terms of design or even in terms of functions and hardware.

Big G should also launch new Nest security cameras and especially the long-awaited Pixel Watch .

The smart watch could take advantage of the new technology just acquired by Fossil and for the Japanese site will be able to compete on equal terms with Apple Watch.

At the moment there are no confirmations regarding the launch dates of these devices but there is a certain certainty that some of them will be unveiled during the 2019 I / O conference to be held in May.

The latest study ” Ratings Prospects ” by Nuvoodoo , a company specializing in digital, market research, telemarketing and direct mail, has provided some interesting results in terms of both the use of radio and the impact on the medium. In the US, where the devices have grown, as from diffusion, from 30% in August 2017 to 43% in January 2019.

In essence, in the USA, smart speakers have now gone home FM / AM receivers (dropped at 40% ), ending up also affecting the traditional infrastructures via ether, as also evidenced by the radio giant iHeart.

The radio frequency of a second time (46%), is a tuning of the IP of an FM radio station, with a percentage of 39% (14% for the radio streaming in AM), followed by 34% by the use of the smart speaker as an agenda for appointments ( “set a reminder “). Streaming on demand (SOD) services for the delivery of music, although this is only 33% for Spotify and at 27% for Pandora and Amazon Music.

Streaming is basically the same as listening to radio stations and moreover, if we evaluate the use of all connected devices, but this is indicative of a virtuous cycle that is reporting radio listening in the past 10 years.

Also relevant is the use of “smart speakers for the use of podcasts” , which recorded an excellent 14% (” fast growing trend” ), close to the use of the intelligent loudspeaker for listening to news, which marks a good 17%.

However, there are still many difficulties encountered by users in identifying the favorite station on their smart speaker; to the question ” He had problems asking Alexa to tune in one of his favorite AM or FM stations “, as many as 46% have, unfortunately, answered positively.

“To overcome this problem, we need to equip ourselves with a skill made according to specifications provided by Amazon, which will make it available only once the verification and validation process has been completed” , explains Massimo Rinaldi, engineer of the Radio TV 4.0 Area of Consultmedia (competence structure) multilevel linked to this periodical).

“Moreover, the” start “and” launch “keys made available by Amazon are a bit more intuitive than the” talk with “,” let me speak with “and” pass me “of Google ( as evidenced by the video demo that we report, ed )” , intervenes Francesca Santucci, Smart Speaker Developer of 22HBG , one of the first and most important Italian companies specialized in the development of radio-related skills and actions.

But there is another, perhaps even more important, the motivation that must push publishers to equip themselves with skills and action: the ability to provide its users with the very important podcasts, the most promising area of ​​advertising and radio publishing.

“Without skills and action, listening mediated by aggregators on smart speakers (when possible) is limited to live streaming”, emphasizes Rinaldi. ” As Consultmedia, the Radio-TV 4.0 work plan for the next two years is to investigate all aspects related to the use of smart speakers as radio receivers. There is a lot to work, also considering the fact that it is now clear that not only on the smart speakers, even on cars, but the preferential selection mode of radio stations within five years will also be almost exclusively vocal, ” continues the engineer.

” This means working on the positioning on the various platforms of streaming streams but – in several cases – also on the name of the stations (criticality already detected in the US, ed). It is not enough to be present more or less effective on all aggregators; you must be easy to find by users. In the last three years, we have determined the DTT landing of almost 50% of the visual radio present today. By 2022 we want to be able to say the same thing as the skill and action of Italian radios”, concludes Rinaldi.

Google is about to reach a new record, Google Assistant will be active on over a billion devices by the end of the month . The forecast was made by Mountain View itself during and the news was released during the CES 2019 in Las Vegas.

This incredible achievement could only be imagined at the launch of Google Assistant during 2016 . The Mountain View company has set itself the goal of creating an Artificial Intelligence able to help the user in all aspects. Whether it’s voice commands, searches or even jokes, Google Assistant is always present and available on Android devices and more. The initial roll-out provided compatibility only with a few selected devices, while now it is available already from the first activation of each device.

The advances of the assistant are evident and continuous while the development of Google Assistant proceeds sustainably. Suffice it to say that only a year ago there were about 400 million devices that supported it. To date, the assistant is present almost everywhere, on smartphones , smartwatch, passing through tablets, headphones and smart speakers. This is why it is not hard to believe Big G.’s prediction.

Obviously the impact of Google Assistant is much more marked than just devices . The estimates do not take into account the number of users who use the assistant that are certainly greater than one billion. We must in fact consider that there are devices that can work in multi-user mode, such as smart speakers. According to Mountain View, active users are 4 times higher than last year but there are no certain figures on which to base themselves.